The Bats - Abertooth Lincoln - Indigo Syndicate - Kolton Moore & The Clever Few

Photo - Martin Sagadin

The Bats - The Gown.

The Bats return with their third single of 2025, ‘The Gown’. With their 11th album, 'Corner Coming Up' on the horizon, the legendary indie rock band are giving us another taste of what’s to come.

The Bats' music has been recently described as "a perfect blend of bittersweet beauty and deceptive simplicity, and the band has a phenomenal ability to create melodies that linger long after the record has stopped spinning."

'The Gown' is not typical Bats, but fits perfectly with the above description and Martin Sagadin’s beautiful video sympathetically represents the emotions and symphonic vibes expressed in the song. Martin's gorgeous new video was shot on location at Grubb Cottage in Ōhinehou, Ōtautahi Grubb, and features band members Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward, as well as film-makers and musicians Annabel Kean (Sports Team) and Callum Devlin (Sports Team, Hans Pucket).

============================================================================

Abertooth Lincoln - Mother is God.

Dayton, Ohio’s feral art-punk heavyweights Abertooth Lincoln return with new single ‘Mother is God’, a haunting ballad of abandonment, delusion, and the wreckage cults leave behind. Available to stream now on all major platforms via Golden Robot Records. 

‘Mother is God’ marks a bold evolution for Abertooth Lincoln. Their first true ballad, the song is a slow-burning meditation on cult leader Amy Carlson - told from the imagined perspective of the child she left behind. It wrestles with the devastating contradiction of a woman who claimed to love the world but couldn’t love her own kid. 

Musically, the track stretches Abertooth’s dynamic range: down-tempo and restrained in moments but laced with dissonance and tension that builds to a gripping, cathartic conclusion. 

Lyrically, it’s intimate and unflinching - capturing the pain of being cast aside while exposing the seductive, hollow nature of cults and the narcissists who lead them. Like many songs on Abertooth’s upcoming album, ‘Mother is God’ explores how self-styled prophets often cloak self-interest in spiritual rhetoric, leaving real damage in their wake. 

============================================================================

Indigo Syndicate - Moonstruck.

Indigo Syndicate’s newest single, “Moonstruck,” plunges into the mind of a schizophrenic narrator, spiraling through the darkness of the voices in their head. Weightlessly dancing between an airtight rhythm section reminiscent of Mark Ronson’s work with Amy Winehouse, the song charts the narrator’s progression from denial to bargaining before ultimately succumbing to the voices.

In the opening verse, the warning is clear: “You’ve been looking far and wide but you dug too deep now you’re lost in your mind / paid the price (paid the price) for looking in places I know I shouldn’t be but I’m lost anyway.” The inescapability deepens in the chorus: “You can’t run from it, you can’t hide from it / but you still gotta choose your poison / you can’t change the game you were made to play / and you can’t beat them, so join them.”

By the second verse, the narrator admits defeat: “But there’s nothing wrong with falling for the voices in your head / I can’t cut them off, so I’ll write these songs until they give the go-ahead.” One last refrain drives the point home: “You can’t beat them, so join them.”

Musically, “Moonstruck” fuses soul, pop, and blues-rock with a modern edge. Its combination of classic yet modern production and silky Bruno Major–like vocals creates a sound both timeless and fresh. It’s a track built for fans of Scary Pockets, The Revivalists, and Glass Animals.

============================================================================

Photo - Brian Andrews

Kolton Moore & The Clever Few - Brave the Weather.

Kolton Moore & The Clever Few have shared their new single “Brave the Weather,” the latest preview of their upcoming sixth album A Place That I Call Home, out September 26. The introspective new song finds Moore exploring the importance of taking care of one’s mental health, especially during life’s more challenging moments.

Moore on the new song: “This song is about navigating through the hard times in life and realizing that you aren’t the only one who struggles with those hard times. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being scared of the storm, you just learn to brave the weather,’ as the song says. This is something I have to remind myself of often. No matter how tough something may seem, it’s okay to be intimidated, but if you push through it, there is always something better on the other side.”

“Brave the Weather” follows the tender “Strawberry Thief” and the anthemic “When We Were Young,” which have garnered praise from Holler, Whiskey Riff and Glide Magazine who praised the band’s “big-hearted twang and songwriting chops.” Produced by GRAMMY-winner Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price), the Texas five-piece’s forthcoming album A Place That I Call Home finds them navigating adulthood while taking stock of hard-earned life lessons along the way. The end result is an album about redefining the meaning of home from a road-warrior band that used to play 250 shows a year when they debuted in 2012.

============================================================================

moonsea - Indigo Syndicate - Cedarsmoke - Yndling

Photo - Barbara-Luyza

moonsea - Power Cut.

moonsea invites you into a flickering world of feeling with her new single 'Power Cut', released yesterday. Born in Manchester, UK, moonsea spent her school years in Auckland before moving to Melbourne in 2013 to study medicine, where she began to experiment with music production and released two EPs under her first artist project Sympholily: Lights (2017) and Baby Blue (2020). Since then, she's blossomed into moonsea and found her signature sound: a blend of classical, electronic and pop rock sounds soaked in nostalgia. 

Her newest single is a tender ballad with an old soul, pulling you into its universe with bird-like synths twittering over lilting keys and guitars. 'Power Cut' is easy to get lost in, with its ephemeral layering, vivid storytelling, and moonsea's angelic vocals. This single feels like a slow dance, an intimate moment between two people who were meant to be.

A love song to the magic built into the mundane, 'Power Cut' pays homage to the romance that can be found in all parts of life with the right person, and makes a wish for it to never fade. 

"As a child I always felt there was something a bit exciting about a power cut… in those hours of darkness, huddled on the living room floor with our half-burned candles, it felt like time had stopped and we’d entered an alternate reality. This was a universe for telling secrets and holding hands, and I had the distinct feeling that anything might happen. I imagined what it might be like to be in such a situation with someone you were secretly in love with… The rest of the song blossomed from there."

============================================================================

Indigo Syndicate - Wondering Why.

Indigo Syndicate’s “Wondering Why” offers a charming, reflective take on life’s unpredictability - questioning how we end up where we are, why certain things happen, and holding on to the quiet hope that things can still change. Inspired by a true story, the song opens with a jazzy, floating guitar that immediately sets a chill, yet contemplative tone. It’s the kind of track that gently pulls you inward, inviting you to reflect on your own journey, your dreams and your detours, as the lyric, “Hopes higher than the price I paid, to change my tires, bleeding dry, could barely fill my tank,” hits with quiet honesty.

With this release, Indigo Syndicate reminds listeners they’re not alone in the struggle. “We wanted people to hear this song and relate to how hopeless following your dreams can feel sometimes. It's not the happiest topic, but at the same time, it's meant to help others feel less alone when the world is getting them down.”

It’s a message that clearly resonates. With four features on “New in Alternative” this year alone, and their last two singles landing on Live Nation’s “Ones To Watch,” Indigo Syndicate continues to strike a chord with a growing audience that craves substance as much as style.

============================================================================

Photo - Thomas Oliver

Cedarsmoke - Picasso Blue.

Fall into the melancholic waves of 'Picasso Blue', the newest single from Cedarsmoke, which was released yesterday. The single comes with the announcement of their third full-length album, 'Under The Rainbow', out October 31. Since their 2016 debut, Cedarsmoke has left their impact on the Brisbane/Meanjin folk scene, with radio plays the country and attention from iconic music platforms such as Triple J, Triple J Unearthed, Double J, MTV,  Pilerats, The Music, AU Review, AAA Backstage, Hysteria Mag, Scenestr and more. Most recently, Cedarsmoke had the pleasure of supporting Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey at the Gold Coast's Home of the Arts.

With storytelling front-and-centre in their songs and their genre-bending sound that drifts between folk, indie, and country, every single release is an evolution of their sound.  The second taste of their upcoming album is 'Picasso Blue'. Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period, it begins with the suicide of Picasso’s friend, Carles Casagemas, and then ripples out into other art forms like the works of James Joyce, Stanley Kubrick and Miles Davis. 

The sombre nature of the blue period is reflected in the song, with its slow country guitar, hazy vocals, with a musical howling in the background that lends the song its lonely feel. This song marches on through the face of adversity, with its muted, slow drumbeat, taking on an almost dreamlike quality. Singer-songwriter Jon Cloumassis shares that, 

"Musically, this song was a chance to experiment. As each verse was set in a different world lyrically, the aim was to pair the new setting with a new arrangement, dramatically shifting the sound from a gentle melancholy to an experimental psychosis. "

============================================================================

Yndling - Fences.

In anticipation of her upcoming sophomore album Time Time Time (I’m in the Palm of Your Hand), Yndling released the new single “Fences” yesterday August 1st. An insightful reflection on self-isolation and inner struggle, 'Fences' considers how rumination can be a hurdle on the path to recovery. The track strikes a balance between echoing electronic effects and ethereal organic instrumentals, retaining an atmospheric sound in its development. Producing a range of light and swirling vocals, Yndling explores the patterns of introspection that can become self-defeating, as she recognizes that real improvement can be counterintuitive.

In her own words Yndling explains, "Fences is about self-isolation and kind of the patterns your brain works itself into when you're struggling with those kind of emotions, and how your mind works against you sometimes. It's produced with a blend of programmed and live drums, giving the verses a claustrophobic feel whilst the choruses open up."

Clad with ascending chord progressions and eccentric effects, the monotonous, anxiety-riddled verses open up to an airy and more hopeful chorus. Yndling's sweeping voice prevails through a soundscape of shimmering synths and soothing electric guitar riffs. Produced with a blend of programmed beats and live recordings, the track is both emotionally raw and rooted in atmospheric electronica.

Yndling · Fences

============================================================================